Hans Kung, Judaism: the religious situation of our time. London: SCM Press, 1992. pp 319 – 347 Kung in these two chapters is attempting to place Jesus in his Jewish context. He notes the following key points: Jesus was not a man of the Jewish establishment Jesus is no preacher of violence Jesus was not [...]

I went on a lovely hike over the weekend. A friend and I hiked down at Wilsons Prom and visited the lighthouse. What struck me about the weekend, other than the obvious beauty of the surrounds, was the local wildlife. Whilst sitting down and preparing dinner I happened to get the fright of my life. [...]

Last night Wayne Swan delivered his second budget. Now I don’t want to comment specifically on the details of that budget, but it would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to remain topical. I believe that one of the many (and perhaps main) roles of Government is to provide for the disadvantaged [...]

I have just finished preparing a part of tomorrow nights dinner (am I organised or what?) and while doing that I was pondering how food tells us a lot about a culture. For lunch today I had a beautiful kebab (Turkey), my preparation was getting together the marinade for Tandoori Chicken (India) and tonight I [...]

Yesterday our church ‘team’ got together and went through a process called “Team Management Systems”. Basically we all filled out an online questionnaire that asked us about how we prefer to work and interact with people. We were then given a pretty detailed report on our ‘work preference style’. The importance, for our team, came [...]

In today’s Age appeared an edited version of Marilyn Lake’s lecture from a free series of lectures at Melbourne University’s School of Historical Studies. Lake is a professor of History at Latrobe University. You can check it out here. In her lecture Lake questioned the role of the ANZAC legend, and particularly Gallipoli, in forming [...]

If you have been watching the news here in Australia over the weekend you will have seen the political furore over the boatload of Asylum Seekers that caught fire and sunk, killing five people and injuring scores more. Seven and a half years on from the ‘Children overboard’ fiasco both sides of Federal politics have [...]

Today the Rudd government announced they were going to fund research into Carbon capture technology. Money is going to be spent on research on a technology that IF, and it’s a big if, works will allow polluting industries to continue polluting. That money will, in the scheme of the Federal budget, now not be spent [...]

Today’s challenge for the 31 days to build a better blog challenge is to write a list post, so here it is: As you have no doubt picked up, I am keen on building community. I think one of the best ways to build community is to eat together, so here is my list of [...]

I am reading “Leadership in the Salvation Army: A case study in clericalisation” by Harold Hill at the moment. It is a great book (so far) looking at how the role of Officership has changed over the history of the Salvation Army. He documents the movement from Officership being differentiated from soldiership on the basis [...]